JPI – JHEP JOINT PILOT TRANSNATIONAL CALL
For Joint Research projects on cultural Heritage
Proposal full title:
SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES AND BELIEFS IN THEIR IMPACT ON MODERN PUBLIC
SPACE
Case Studies of Popular Religious Characters in Their Literary and Music Expressions and Social
Discourse
Name of the lead coordinator person:
Dr. Irena Avsenik Nabergoj
INITIAL DESCRIPTION OF PROPOSED PROJECT
General Introduction
The phenomenon of religion is one of central domains of modern social science. Religious experience is sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience. The commonalities and differences between religious experiences across different cultures have enabled scholars to categorize them for academic study. In most European countries there is a tension between practitioners of social science and religious belief. Since Sigmund Freud and many others there is a strong hostility to religion, especially among members of professional elites. Many sociologists claim that religion could only be considered as a useful ethics code in the past and do not believe religion plays a vital role in modern society. Many see the contradiction between religion and modern society and claim that they still have morals even though they personally do not believe in a God. In former communist countries religious beliefs were treated as arbitrary and unimportant. In typical social science analysis use an alien framework of research, the demands of the inner life are neglected. Defenders of religion believe that religion sets the basic norms and customs of the society. The German thinker Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) argues that there is one common factor to all religious experience, independent of the cultural background, identified as the numinous in communion with a holy other. Many people see in principles of religion a mirror for society and a justification for marching on the streets to express their sentiments towards their governments.
In order to understand the background of the tension between religion and modern society it is important to distinguish between two distinct categories or orientations of dealing with religion:
“intrinsic” and “extrinsic,” because this distinction make clear how great may be the tension within the believers themselves. Intrinsic beliefs are practiced in personal relation to God and saints in a way that transcends the person’s own existence. Intrinsic attitudes and practices are concerned with moral standards and consciousness, responsibility and consistency. An intrinsic attitude at its best endorses meaningful life, fosters community, and promulgates the noblest values. In contrast to such attitudes, extrinsic practice of religion is characterized by outward observance. Since it is not internalized extrinsic practioners are self-oriented and self-indulgent, les responsible and motivated, and likely to be dogmatic and authoritarian. Such characters create unnecessary division, hostility,
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and teach intolerance, none of which are useful in modern society. It is all the more evident that only intrinsic attitudes and practices can strengthen individuals, families, communities, and society as a whole.
A significant modern example of combining ideology about an ideal society and the properties of human personality is the influential book A Theory of Justice (1971) by John Rawls. The people are not united first of all by conventional contracts but through inner force of individual characters in their purity of heart, simplicity and therefore total vulnerability. The unity of the self is best manifested in a total human identity that is created by love and a sense of justice sub specie aeternitatis . He closes the book (page 587) with the explanation of the term of eternity:
The perspective of eternity is not a perspective from a certain place beyond the world, nor the point of view of a transcendent being; rather it is a certain form of thought and feeling that rational persons can adopt within the world. And having done so, they can, whatever their generation, bring together into one scheme all individual perspectives and arrive together at regulative principles that can be affirmed by everyone as he lives by them, each from his own standpoint. Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view.
The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic attitudes and practices apply also to cultural heritage. The values embodied in cultural heritage can be assessed extrinsically or intrinsically.
Intrinsic attitudes acknowledge in cultural heritage significance for human life, for common values and social systems. Cultural significance is said to be embodied in historical and social institutions and includes aesthetic, historic, scientific, social and spiritual values for past, present and future generations. Values vary across individuals and cultures and are in many ways aligned with belief and belief systems. Different cultures reflect different values. Values tend to influence attitudes and behaviour. The public expression of values, embodied in cultural heritage and prevailing norms, are either in agreement with or divergent from normative personal values and from intrinsic values such as altruism and the sense for justice. Personal values provide an internal reference for what is good, beneficial, important, constructive. Values have changed in some respects, affecting the beliefs, and attitudes of people.
The preference of intrinsic attitudes and practices explains why in all times, and consequently also in most modern times, personal religious images or characters are very attractive for many people and popular in various areas of personal and social life. Questions about moral character have recently come to occupy a central place in philosophical discussion. In Kantianism and utilitarianism the foundation for morality is mistakenly in legalistic notions such as duty and obligation. Interest in the nature of virtue, as designation of admirable moral character, stimulated philosophers to explore the psychological foundations of virtue and the contributions made by good moral characters that is more reminiscent of the Greeks and Hebrews than of many rationalistic modern approaches to character. In modern usage of “character” the emphasis is on distinctiveness of individuality, hence on “personality.” Exploring psychological foundation of moral character discloses a harmony between cognitive and affective elements of the person in relation to itself and to others. Virtue and moral character have been neglected topics in the development of western moral philosophy since the Greeks and narratives of the Hebrews. Instead of these the focus of moral philosophers was on obligation, duty, and law. But the role of practical wisdom is to make good moral character an ideal for all people. New challenges help to acknowledge how useful traditional conceptions and examples of good character can be and how the institutions can promote good qualities of character.
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The revival of traditional secular and religious characters opens the question of the nature of spirituality. “Spirituality” is normally referred to a unique, personally meaningful experience.
Spirituality does not necessarily involve religiousness. In Western tradition the discourse about spirituality makes reference to something greater than ourselves, such as God, the divine. The definition of spirituality includes the rich expression of religious reference to God, the divine, or the saints. Because many people are spiritual but not theistic, c comprehensive definition of spirituality is often separated from religious reference to God, the divine, or the saints. This explains why the popular figure of Mary and some saints are popular both in sacred and secular spaces of modern societies. The fascinating biblical story of Mary is missing with details. So tradition did its own part in trying to fill in those details and make that her life and role fuller.
Case Study of the Virgin Mary in Slovenian Culture
Case studies of popular characters in art and society relate to motifs and images of especially influential characters in various European countries. The most common figure or character is the
Virgin Mary, “one of the most powerful imaginary constructs known in the history of civilization,” as Julia Kristeva puts claims (Waller 2011: vii). My part of research will concentrate on the central figure in Christianity, the character of Mary as presented in literary and music expressions and social discourse within Slovenia. The subject of research are religious expressions of Mary as well the secular interpretations establishing independent status of the figure of Mary, freed from her relation to Christ. The choice of this figure is connected with historical witnesses of devotional acceptance and insistent attempts to remove the presence of the Virgin from people’s mind. In all centuries, there were actions of iconoclasm. The question is to what extent were they successful.
Garry Waller asks this question in connection with the iconoclasm of 1538 in England and realizes that throughout the following centuries of iconoclasm, the Virgin Mary inspired a rich tradition of poems, fiction, songs, ballads, musical compositions and folk legends, solemn devotional writings and hostile satire. Although significantly downgraded, marginalized, re-negotiated, or all-but-eradicated (all terms used by modern historians) in the dominant Protestant theology, liturgy, devotion, and the very gradually (and often reluctantly) changing recesses of popular culture, the continuities and transformations of the Virgin, I argue, continue to haunt early modern England. (2011: viii)
The most challenging question is how to explain the phenomenon that the image of the Virgin
Mary continues to manifest its power in different traditions of religious thought and experience, and to some extent in the modern secular space.
The attempt to explain the phenomenon of the Virgin Mary in different traditions we need a interdisciplinary approach within cultural studies, drawing on history, art history, literary criticism and theory, gender study, theology, and psychoanalysis. The Virgin Mary persistently transforms herself to become recognizable in different times and places. She has sustained hope over individual lives, reminded the people of unexpected compassion that is eternal, and inspired contemporary artists. An interdisciplinary approach faces tensions, paradox, and ironic quest for a new order in the contemporary society. In the modern time we can observe the social partition of profane and sacred, with the spread of rational thinking and signs of religious revival in different parts of the world. Modernization does not exclusively lead to secularization, but provokes countersecular and anti-elite movements as well. Our focus is on the contrast between the conception of a rationalizing European thinking and “transcendental” or “irrational” content of human consciousness.
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The area of the research will relate to biblical, anthropological and art’s foundations of the image of
Mary in Slovenian literature of 19 th
and 20 th
centuries. The Bible of the New Testament contains a few places presenting Mary in various circumstances and rules in her human generosity and also in her limitations. Important is also typological reference to the Old Testament events. Figural and typological exegesis since antiquity establishes inner connection between the Old and the New
Testament. An overview of the history of Christian civilization shows that Mary has an exceptional cultural significance. In the feeling of artists the image of Mary goes beyond doctrinal definitions and institutional boundaries through Mary’s symbolic representation of woman’s generosity in all dimensions thus presenting an identification figure of existential situation of every human being.
As elsewhere in Europe, the image of Mary appears in Slovenian countries in folk songs, artistic poetry, ballads, legends, dramas and other genres.
The context of the image and the role of Mary in the Bible and in Christian tradition represents a special challenge for legitimation of anthropological foundation of dealing with the image of Mary, in the modern society especially in the framework of the feminist movement. The image of Mary is represented in numerous Slovenian folk songs and in literary works of great writers of Slovenia and of other countries. Mention may be made of the greatest Slovenian poet France Prešeren (1800–
1849) and of the greatest Slovenian writer Ivan Cankar (1876–1918). Prešeren includes the image of Mary in his great poem Krst pri Savici (The Baptism on Savica), Cankar in his works Na klancu
(On the Hill),
Hiša Marije Pomočnice
(The Ward of Our lady of Mercy),
Mimo življenja
(Passing by Life), Podobe iz sanj (Dream Visions), etc. Literary works of Slovenian writers will be compared with great works of world literature (Petrarca, Shaespeare and of some more modern classics).
Exploitation and more concrete impact of results will be defined in cooperation among all partners of the project
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